She’s too friendly with him?

[Suspiciousmind1]

I’ve had this nagging feeling for a while about a woman who has slowly snuck into our social group. She’s a single mum, attractive, hard worker (a trait my DH finds attractive), has a fair bit in common with my DH, members at a similar sports club….

In January DH went on a sporting holiday, organised my his sports club and on it were several of our mutual friends. I was meant to go too but had to pull out at the last minute due to a sick child. Said girl went on the trip. There was a pretty active group what’s app (which I was on) prior to this and for a few weeks later, so I didn’t think much of their messages. the what’s app has quietened down and I’ve noticed some facebook messages coming up between them. I’m fine with this, or at least I was until recently, as I often message some of our mutual
single male friends.

Since the trip he’s now going to the club more frequently. I assumed it’s to increase his fitness as we’ve both piled on the pounds and are on a health kick. There have now been a few occasions where I’ve been at work and he’s taken our DC out for the day and they’ve randomly ‘bumped into each other.’ Over the bank holiday weekend a message with our mutual friends has been put on FB suggesting meal at our local pub. Guess who turns up too?
On the first May bank holiday we went to an event with some friends… who rocks up?

its all been at the back of my mind but we’re so easy going with things and trust each other to be friends with the opposite sex. However it’s starting to nag away with me. I took our 3 yo to the park last week and she recognised her daughter who was there with her dad. As far as I know, they’ve only met once. Then this morning I got a call from a mutual friend (member of the club, went on the trip, part of the extended friendship group) and this woman came up in conversation. She asked what I thought about their friendship, their messages, the fact that she seems to now turn up to everything. I honestly hadn’t really thought about it to that extent but others are now noticing.

So I did what I vowed I’d never do and I feel so bad for doing so, but I’ve downloaded his messenger back onto our home iPad (I’m sure the app has recently been deleted!!) and I’ve scrolled and scrolled through daily messages.
how’s your day? Where were you this morning (the club activity?) You two going to X’s party?
they’re sending selfies of themselves doing normal yet random things, photos of drinks that obviously remind them of their trip away, he’s sent a couple of photos of him during his work trip abroad.
it turns out she ‘owed’ him money (a pretty considerable amount) from their trip- he’s said it’s his treat! Apparently his first drink when they ‘party’ at an upcoming event is on her…
She was out at a birthday meal with me, he was at home with DC, she’s messaged him saying she’s out with me and I’m really good fun…
It goes on….

in fairness, it’s nothing more than the type of friendly banter you’d have with a friend, but other people are now talking. The messages are secret. Im only finding out about their little ‘random’ meets in passing. I’m now thinking he left a family party on Monday to do a site visit in a village where she’d tagged herself in a street party post. They didn’t meet up, but was he hoping to?

I don’t want to jump the gun here, I don’t want to confront him about messages that he would know I’ve read, I don’t want to say people are talking, I don’t want to be the bad guy here to shoot down their friendship because I don’t trust him…

I want to believe it’s nothing more than friendly banter but I’m really not sure now.

I need to nip it in the bud now though. I know this is how affairs start. How the hell do I handle it?

Exactly. So why was he so cagey? If there was 'nothing there' as you say, why not show his wife the full thread?

I would be uncomfortable with that. I wouldn't accept him messaging her, sorry

Trust your intuition

Missed out a few pages, but wanted to comment on this:

How would you react if your husband told you that you were no longer allowed to be friends with someone, and that if you didn't stop he'd publicly embarrass you? If any woman came on here to say that her partner had said that she would immediately be told to leave such a controlling bastard!

I disagree. Imagine it…
I’ve got very close to a single man who has form for cheating, I’ve lent him money which my husband knows nothing about, I often bump into him and our children know each other, we text each other several times a day. A friend of my husband commented that it seems a bit close so my husband wants me to stop seeing him - AIBU?

I don’t believe there are many MNers who would suggest a husband in this situation was being controlling.

The situation may very well be innocent, but boundaries are most definitely being crossed.

It’s up to him now - he either backs off from her or he carries on secretly. You’ve done all you can. Just keep an eye on it.

In this situation I think it would be beneficial for her not to keep turning up at all these meet ups you have with friends. Who is telling her about them? Him? You could ask him to stop that.

He’ll still see her at the hobby/activity things he does though…

@EvelynKatie I do think like you that you have to have been in this position to understand- I was from the 'cool mum' school- I was 100% ok with all kinds of female friends ( we work in a very sociable sector) I was incredibly trusting- but sometimes things just don't sit right-- and it feels the ultimate disrespect if you are cool and trusting and someone takes total advantage of it to go off boosting their ego or enjoying a nice secret buzz. - even if it's not a physical affair. If I had been going off like this my H would have certainly not been cool about it- strangely he would have been almost 100% sure the bloke was trying to get into my knickers to put it crudely.

Sorry you're going through this OP. Fwiw I think you've done the right thing to raise it calmly and then see what happens. I'd also ask him how he'd feel if you were messaging "Dave from hobby group" without ever mentioning it and his friends were asking him if there was something going on between you and Dave.

It's the secrecy that is the issue - he knows he's doing something wrong otherwise why wouldn't he say "oh, just got a message from amy, she's coming to hobby tonight..." or whatever. The people I message every day I chat to DP about "oh, Claire bought a new coffee machine..." etc.

He has admitted it has gone too far so hopefully you've caught it before it has crossed too many lines. From experiencing my ex's journey from friendship to emotional affair to physical affair, I think they don't even realise a line has been crossed until they're way too far over it to even see it let alone turn back.

I would definitely be checking what message he sends to her now.

Because there's an expectation of privacy and trust in a marriage. It doesn't matter that there's nothing there.

The thing is, though, if someone's suspicious then they will usually find something they consider to be proof of their suspicions even if there's a completely innocent explanation for it - confirmation bias is a very real thing, we all know that. That is why he'd be cagey about it, and he'd be right - as shown by the fact that this thread has continued with people saying, "See? He's definitely guilty, you're right to be suspicious!" even though he's answered every suspicion and there's still nothing there.

And yet, even with that confirmation bias present, OP still didn't find anything, and still has suspicions.

There is nowhere for this to go. OP will continue suspecting him forever (and if there is nothing to be found in this case, the suspicion will rear its head every time he speaks to another woman) and will never be able to fully trust him, and he will continue being unable to say or do anything to prove her suspicions false (and, if told that she'd already read the messages instead of talking to him first, he'll never fully trust her again either).

That's what I was trying to get across when I suggested she think through all the possible outcomes before doing anything earlier in the thread; now, though, having taken all of her advice from the AIBU collective, it's past the point of no return.

I would be keeping that message app on the ipad for now.

Presumably because while she's had a chance to go through the entire conversation of the last few months, he hasn't. He's sat there thinking "Shit, what might be in here that my wife might take the wrong way!"

Would you be happy to show your husband a long Whatsapp convo with a good friend? Maybe the last six months worth? Can you think off the top of your head whats in that conversation? Maybe you've complained about him, maybe your friend has shared some health worries that she'd rather not have shared, maybe you've shared a joke that your husband might find offensive.

I've had the jealous untrusting partner. I knew there was nothing untoward on my phone, yet I still shat myself when I found out she'd been nosing around it. Its the same feeling you get when you walk through airport security, even though you known you haven't got a bomb on you.

I left that relationship sharpish.

It really doesn't matter how solid a basis a marriage has if one party starts giving their attention to a third party, and in doing so crosses the boundaries of the other. I assume your own marriage has some boundaries? They may be in a different place to the OPs, but if they were crossed, all the trust you've put down as a foundation would really help you, would it?
The OP could be the least suspicious woman on earth, her trust would not act like a protective sheild against betrayal.
Her husband has, by his own admission, taken things too far with another woman and has agreed to change his behaviour because of that.
If he, the person in the situation can acknowledge he was wrong, I'm not sure why you need to keep saying otherwise and diverting blame to the OP.

Did he show you the message where she borrowed a considerable amount of money off him and he said she didn't need to pay it back as it was his treat?

I would really not have been impressed by that! I'm guessing he conveniently didn't show you that one?

This is not just a case of checking your partner's phone frequently as a jealous, controlling, abusive person.

This is when you know your partner is starting to act different, there's something quite off, there's a 'friendship' that's really getting too close. He's sending little selfies through the day, daily how are yous, lending money, meeting up... it's getting to the point that it's really starting to cross boundaries. You're made to think you're going mad, because actually it's 'just a friendship' and 'nothing has happened.' But this level of contact and closeness increases, and gets more secretive. Very telling other people are noticing this, including one of his own friends.
"He’s also told me that DH of our friend ‘jokingly’ asked if he was meeting up with this woman on that first bank holiday. It’s clear more and more people can see what’s going on."

Exactly. Even the DH admits he’s taken the friendship too far yet posters on here are still insisting the OP is in the wrong. Utterly bizarre.

Relationships are fluid. People earn your trust and that is based on their behaviour. You don’t trust blindly and indefinitely in the face of behaviour that has changed.

Im sure the 50% of wives whose husbands cheat on them (or whatever the figure is and vice versa) all trusted their husbands.

But he hasn't crossed any boundaries. As proven by the fact that she's found absolutely nothing in the phone conversation.

He has a friendship with a woman. Thats it. I'm not saying it might not have progressed given time, but OP could have still had the conversation she had with her husband today, without going digging for evidence first. Instead, she's chosen to put herself in a position of power in that conversation by digging for evidence and then lying about it.

@fdgdfgdfgdfg He certainly would have crossed my boundaries purely by lending money to some woman he hardly knows , not wanting it back and never mentioning it to me. Maybe you would be fine about that-I wouldn't!

Yep. I'm putting myself in those posters positions as I can see where they're coming from. I might have even thought/said the same things myself. I trusted my ex-DH completely, and had never experienced that trust being broken before.

Despite this having happened to me, I completely trust my DP now. I don't blink an eye lid at him messaging female friends, in the same way as I was with my ex-DH. However, this is because I know exactly how it is when a friendship starts crossing boundaries and the shift in dynamic... if it ever happened again, I wouldn't take so long to draw a line.

Except...it's been demonstrated that he wasn't betraying her at all. It turns out that her boundary is "When other people start talking to me about you talking to another woman", which he couldn't possibly know happened.

By "taken things too far", he was clearly speaking in hindsight and hadn't actually done anything (and nor did he intend to - the OP has accepted that, yet is still suspicious).

I'm not just blaming the OP for reading the messages behind his back, though (especially when it's obvious at this point that he would have let her see them if she'd asked - because he did). I'm saying that because of the way she's approached this problem there is now no way back - neither of them can prove that the other is wrong or lying (or both).

The real mistake was asking the question here, because the responses are so entirely predictable (ie assuming an affair, and giving advice based on that), instead of doing the rational thing and just talking to her husband first.

It's honestly not just an innocent 'friendship.' But I understand people won't understand this unless they've been through this situation before.

Depends how much money it is. £500 then I'd be rather miffed, £50 I couldn't really bring myself to care about.

Neither one would scream affair to me though

@Cosycover Me too!

You have no idea if this is true. You're applying your biases and experiences to a situation that may be completely different to the one you went through. And that's fine, that's what we all do.

But in this case, the OP themselves has admitted that the husband hasn't done a shitty thing (yet) and been very open when called out, whereas she demonstrably has done a shitty thing, and then lied about it.

This. I told my husband that I was really uncomfortable with a woman who had clear interest in him getting in touch to meet up recently.

I told him honestly that I'd always been uncomfortable with them socialising, that she was always transparently off about it. I trusted him, but hated the pissy way she made me feel.

He listened to how I felt, told me that he didn't value her intermittent friendship as much as my comfort, and that he wouldn't meet her again.

I even expressed guilt at limiting his social life, but he said that I "was allowed one mortal enemy", which was a good way to put it :D He also pointed out that I regularly socialise with his exes, and he does so solo too without a flicker of discomfort, so it's not like I'm a jealous person, and I'm allowed to feel that something is off.

• Since meeting her on a trip, he's suddenly going to the club more frequently
• Takes their DC out and somehow manages to 'bump' into her a lot
• She keeps turning up to events with their friends
• Mutual friend is asking her what she thinks of this 'friendship' - so other people noticing it's getting a bit too close
• Frequent messages including just general 'how's your day' - who sends all their friends daily check ins?
• Given her money as a 'treat'
• Her DH admits messaging has gone too far
• DH admits one of his friends has also commented on this 'friendship'

Yet people still trying to say OP is in the wrong.

And even when he admitted it had gone too far? So he knew he'd overstepped a line so OP is within rights to think something is off here.